There were the speeches. There were the statistics. There was Jonathan Greenblatt on the main stage warning of the most dangerous surge of antisemitism in living memory. All of that mattered — and all of that was real. But the people who spent two days at Never Is Now, the ADL’s annual summit and the world’s largest gathering dedicated to fighting antisemitism, will tell you that the most powerful moments often happened somewhere else entirely. In the corridors. Over coffee. In the accidental, lingering conversations between sessions that no agenda could have planned. This was not simply a conference. It was a community coming together — to learn, to grieve, to compare notes, to find allies, and, perhaps most unexpectedly, to feel hope.

Thousands arrived from across the country and around the world. Policymakers sat beside activists. Campus leaders sat beside corporate executives. Holocaust educators sat beside first-generation advocates who had only recently found their voice. And woven through all of it was a recognition that in this particular moment in Jewish history, none of them should be doing this alone.

It felt like a reunion in many cases — seeing people you know, learning and growing, and seeing for the first time in a while: hope. Knowing you are not alone in this fight. That is the magic of the experience.

The State of Hate: What Greenblatt Told a Full House

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt opened the summit with a blunt accounting of where things stand. The numbers alone are staggering.

But Greenblatt made clear the threat is not just statistical. He described the West Bloomfield, Michigan car-bomb attempt on Temple Israel — where 106 children were in daycare when the attack was thwarted — and violence from Australia to Canada. “Antisemitism has not just become murderous,” he said. “It’s become mundane.” He named the full spectrum of perpetrators: white supremacists, Islamist extremists, conspiratorial politicians, and media figures. The hate, he said, is “everything, everywhere, all at once.”

“We are facing the most concentrated, the most dangerous, and lethal surge of antisemitism — the worst in living memory.”

— Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO

He also closed the door on a growing debate about whether fighting antisemitism is worth the institutional investment. “Some have argued that we need to choose between fighting antisemitism and building Jewish life,” he said. “Those aren’t competing priorities — they are inseparable preconditions.” And the stakes, he argued, reach beyond any one community. “A country riddled by antisemitism is one where democracy is in danger — for everyone.”

The Magic in the Hallways

If the main stage set the urgency, the corridors carried the soul. Never Is Now attracts a genuinely unusual mix of people — and the unscheduled collisions between them are part of what makes it singular. Professionals connected with students. Advocates met philanthropists. Shlichim — emissaries from Israel — shared their perspectives with BBYO and Hillel chapter leaders who had never spoken to someone who had lived through October 7 firsthand. It was, more than one attendee said, like a family reunion for a family that didn’t fully know it existed.

The conversations were extraordinary in their range. Seasoned organizational leaders compared notes with people who had started fighting back less than 18 months ago. Students described what antisemitism looks like on their specific campus, in their specific classroom, in their specific Greek life chapter. And in many cases, they heard back: “I know exactly what you’re describing. Here’s what worked for us.”

Voices from the Floor: The People Who Made the Summit

Among the most memorable presences at Never Is Now were figures who have found entirely new ways to carry Jewish identity and advocacy into spaces where it has never reached before.

Courtesy Aaron Herman

The young Chabad content creator from Brooklyn has built one of the most unexpected social media movements of recent years: wrapping tefillin with some of the most powerful names in American business and culture. Bill Ackman, Scooter Braun, Barry Sternlicht, Michael Rapaport — Farro has met them all not in boardrooms or green rooms, but on street corners and coffee lines, asking a simple question: Are you Jewish? His Instagram bio says it plainly: “Join me as I wrap the most powerful Jews in the world.” At Never Is Now, he was in his element — a living demonstration that Jewish pride and connection can be sparked anywhere, at any moment, with anyone.

Farro embodies a principle that ran through much of the summit: that the antidote to antisemitism is not only defense but affirmation. “In a time of increasing Jew hatred,” one observer wrote, “celebrities publicly engaging with Jewish ritual are helping to increase Jewish pride, love, and commitment — the perfect antidote.” Farro’s approach — rooted in the Talmudic principle that one mitzvah leads to another — has translated beautifully to the age of social media. One encounter goes viral; another person reaches out. The chain grows.

Courtesy Aaron Herman

With over 14 million followers across social media, Tucker is one of the most consequential Jewish voices of her generation — and one of the most unlikely. The award-winning singer, dancer, and actress from Boca Raton built her platform on choreography and performance, not politics. Then her grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, died. She rewatched his Shoah Foundation testimony. And she decided that if social media existed during the Holocaust, he would have used it. So she did. Her 10-part TikTok docuseries “How to: Never Forget” took her followers to Auschwitz in real time and introduced the Holocaust to millions of young people who had never encountered it. Her documentary “The Children of October 7” followed. At the 2024 Grammys, she wore a yellow ribbon gown reading ‘Bring Them Home’ and refused to take it off.

At Never Is Now, Tucker represented something that many in attendance described as a new model for advocacy: using authentic storytelling, dance, and art to open doors that traditional education cannot. “A dance video is going to relate to a different audience than me just speaking to a camera,” she has said. “That’s the power of social media — you truly don’t know whose page it’s going to land on.” Her presence at the summit underscored a broader recognition that if the next generation is going to be reached, it has to be reached where they already are.

The Next Generation Shows Up

Perhaps the most quietly powerful presence at Never Is Now was its youngest. Students from Hillel chapters and BBYO — representing communities from campuses across the country — moved through the summit with a kind of alert hunger. They came not just to listen but to learn tactics, to find mentors, and to take something concrete back to the spaces where they spend their daily lives.

For many of them, the summit marked the first time they had been in a room with thousands of other people who understood. Jewish students have spent the past two years largely isolated in their experiences — navigating hostile campus environments, watching friends who once called themselves allies go silent, being told their discomfort is political rather than human. At Never Is Now, they were not the exception. They were the norm.

Courtesy Aaron Herman

Adding a particular texture to the student experience was the presence of  Jewish Agency For Israel shlichim — Israeli emissaries — who brought with them a perspective forged by proximity. Their willingness to share what October 7 and its aftermath actually felt like from the inside, and to connect with American Jewish students who had only experienced it from thousands of miles away, gave the summit something that no panel or keynote could replicate: a direct human connection across the ocean.

From the Main Stage to the Breakout Room

The formal programming delivered exactly what it promised. Over a day and a half, more than 100 experts led sessions spanning the full range of the challenge: Christian-Jewish alliances, antisemitism in professional sectors, the role of generative AI in spreading radicalization, campus policy, and a special segment connecting Jewish identity to the United States’ upcoming 250th anniversary.

The breakout sessions were where many attendees said the deepest learning happened — smaller rooms, more specific problems, more honest exchange. A session on addressing antisemitism in health care felt different from one focused on social media strategy, which felt different again from a conversation about labor organizing. What they shared was a quality of engagement that only comes when people in the same fight find themselves in the same room.

General sessions featured a remarkable assembly of voices. David Rubenstein, the investor and historian, brought a long view of Jewish life in America. Scott Galloway addressed the ways technology is reshaping both community and harm. Emmanuel Acho, who received the ADL Ally Award, spoke to the importance of non-Jewish voices standing firmly in solidarity. Robert Kraft, whose Blue Square Alliance found that 25 percent of Americans now hold antisemitic attitudes — an increase of 26 million people in just 18 months — received the ADL Changemaker Award. Gap Inc. CEO Richard Dickson received the Courage Against Hate Award for his corporate leadership in making the fight against bigotry a business priority.

The Summit’s Biggest Announcement: Hazak Is Born

The summit closed with one of its most consequential announcements. On March 17, ADL launched Hazak: Jewish Venture Accelerator — a first-of-its-kind grassroots program designed to take the fight against antisemitism directly into the institutions where it is now appearing.

The inaugural cohort of five organizations was unveiled at the summit, spanning the health care, arts, labor, and K–12 education sectors:

“Antisemitism is showing up in hospitals and union halls, schools and theaters, and we need trusted, credible voices in every one of those spaces,” said Greenblatt. “Hazak will scale our reach and impact while preserving the local knowledge and community trust that make grassroots leaders so effective.”

ADL Vice President of Advocacy Shira Goodman called the cohort’s work “critical” and said the partnership is designed to achieve lasting impact rather than episodic intervention. The program is a direct response to the surge in community demand for ADL support since October 7, 2023.

Never Is Now — And the Fight Goes On

What Never Is Now produced, in the end, was not just programming or even the groundbreaking Hazak launch. It produced something harder to measure and perhaps more durable: the knowledge, for thousands of people who have often felt isolated in this fight, that they are part of something larger than themselves.

The students who flew in from their campuses went home with tools and contacts and the memory of a room that believed what they believe. The professionals who came representing one sector left with a clearer sense of what was happening in every other. The influencers and the investors, the educators and the advocates, the Israeli emissaries and the American organizers — all of them moved through the same corridors, sat in the same sessions, had the same unexpected conversations.

“Silence is not an option. The urgency of this moment couldn’t be clearer.”

— Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO 

The summit’s name is both a warning and a declaration. Never is now — as in: the thing we swore would never happen again is happening again, right now, and the response must be immediate. But also: never give up, never stand aside, never stop fighting. For everyone who left New York after March 17, the question now is what they do with what they carried home. Based on two days in those rooms — and those hallways — there is reason to believe the answer will be: quite a lot.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)